Digitimes Insight: Quake will not have serious impact on OLED material supply

Ricky Tu, DIGITIMES Research, Taipei

Tuesday 22 March 2011

Japan is an important supplier of upstream OLED materials. Sumitomo Chemical and Showa Denko are the main material producers of polymer-based OLED, and Idemitsu Kosan and Mitsui Chemicals are in the small molecules camp. In addition, TDK Micro Device manufactures passive matrix OLED (PMOLED) panels.

Sumitomo's OLED material production only saw modest disruption from the earthquake compared with Showa Denko's operations, which could cause shipment disruptions for clients.

Idemitsu are mainly affected by the transportation and power outages, and Mitsui's operations are relatively unharmed. Though more companies utilize small molecules materials, there are still other supply sources such as US-based UDC. Overall, OLED material should not be impacted.

Since TDK makes PMOLED panels, it will not affect AMOLED panel supply. Moreover, the world's largest PMOLED panel maker is Taiwan's Ritek.

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